Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

The exceptional Australian author, journalist, literary critic and essayist Antonella Gambotto-Burke, is on the verge of releasing her latest book Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love.

When I first began reading Antonella’s books and essays (in Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and elsewhere), I was taken aback by the quality and eloquence of writing, the mastery of language, the way she captured and described people so acutely, her often acerbic observations and sharp wit. A magazine profile she wrote on former footballer Warwick Capper and his wife Joanne (included in The Best Australian Profiles, Black Inc., 2004) had me in hysterics. Another profile, not so amusing, on the porn star Sasha Grey, was beyond comparison. Her writing on the global trade in female bodies should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned about human rights violations. The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide, (one of her five books) is an intimate and searing portrayal of the death of her much loved brother at his own hand. Its pages drip with grief. But she would consider her greatest achievement her daughter Bethesda who arrived as a later-in-life gift which caused an earthquake in her soul and caused her to re-arrange her life and priorities.

For those interested in the theme of motherhood and attachment parenting, comes Antonella’s latest work, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love. In addition to her essays on love, death, marriage and motherhood, Mama includes long interviews with (in her words – I say that because I’m included!) “some of the most extraordinary people alive today: Steve Biddulph, Stephanie Coontz, artist Michael Hague, Tom Hodgkinson, Sheila Kitzinger, Laura Markham, Gabor Mate, Michel Odent, Attachment Parenting International’s Lysa Parker, MamaBake’s Michelle Shearer, Melinda Tankard Reist and many others. Connecting with each of them was a tremendous privilege”.

“A gifted writer, Antonella needs only a few lines to turn our attention toward the essential” writes obstetrician and visionary Michel Odent in his introduction to Mama.

Antonella argues that there’s no place for a debate between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers. “The debate we should be having is with the architects of a culture that makes calm and attentive parenthood close to impossible”.

“A number of women I know stifled their sensitivity and maternal instincts to compete in male-dominated spheres, eroding – and, often, destroying – the most important relationships of their lives.

“The bar is masculine, and women must adopt traditionally masculine characteristics – cultivated insensitivity, goal-orientated thinking, the prioritizing of the material – to compete,” she writes.

In her book, she asks why we are still conditioned to understand sensitivity as weakness, and why we continue to accept this conditioning. Other questions she raises include:

- Since when did ratification from a dispassionate boss trump the nurturance of human life?

- When did motherhood come to be understood as a series of “thankless tasks”?

- Why are breastfeeding numbers around the world dropping?

- How have we come to understand babies as “blobs”?

- How can we heal rifts with our children?

- What is behind the tsunami of behavioural disorders?

- Why is our culture so sexualised, and how is it affecting our children?

- What roles do fathers have in making a serene experience of motherhood?

- Why are so many children committing suicide?

- What are we doing to mothers, and how will this impact on our own future?

You’re Invited

Sydney: April 23, Mosman Library, 7pm, Antonella will share a conversation with Steve Biddulph, one of the world’s bestselling parenting authors, about Mama, motherhood and attachment parenting. Wine and food. Bookings essential, and can be made through Pages & Pages Bookshop in Mosman.

Melbourne: May 30 Readings in Hawthorn Melbourne,12pm. Bookings are essential here. Cost of tickets is redeemable against the cost of the book.

Northern NSW: May 6 Lennox Head Library, 10am, with Michelle Shearer of MamaBake.

After writing the multi-million best-selling Raising Boys in 2003, psychologist Steve Biddulph thought his life work was done.

But the parenting guru and father of two kept hearing sad stories of friend’s daughters and coming into contact with parents in despair about how unhappy their girls were. They were plagued by eating disorders, self-harm, and depression.

“When I was writing on boys, girls were doing fine,” says Biddulph. “Then about five years ago that started to change. We began noticing a sudden and marked plunge in girls’ mental health.

“The average girl, every girl, was stressed and depressed in a way we hadn’t seen before. Nearly one in five has a serious mental health issue during her growing up years. You can’t ignore that”.

So he didn’t, writing a guidebook - Raising Girls: From babyhood to womanhood – helping your daughter to grow up wise, warm and strong (Finch Publishing) – which shot to no.2 on UK Amazon’s charts this week (until it was knocked off by a diet book recommended by Posh Spice).

Biddulph argues that girls have to be proactively launched into healthy womanhood.

“We haven’t loved girls well enough, understood them deeply enough, or stood alongside them to face the hyenas of this world that wanted to tear them down,” he says.

Biddulph gives parents a map for how to build strength and connectedness through the five stages of girlhood: being secure, learning to explore, relating to other people, finding your soul, and taking charge of your life.

What surprised him most in the writing of the book, he tells me, was the way the world comes at them.

“It reminds me of those images of the tsunami, all that junk surging into the streets and houses. That’s what our media is like now – flooding junk into children’s heads – that your looks are all that matter, that sex is just something you trade, that you can’t be loved for yourself,” he says.

“Being evaluated in terms of how you look, how you please others, how you are seen as a ‘product’ has taken girls back fifty years,” Biddulph says.

“Girls are in enormous pain and confusion. They are filling up the mental health clinics, the police stations and emergency rooms, the alcohol and drug treatment programs in numbers never seen before.

“Girlhood dramas should be dramas of learning and growing, not being battered and damaged”.

I ask him what he thinks is the best thing parents can do to help raise strong, resilient daughters (I have a vested interest in the answer, with three daughters of my own).

“Once you have a clear idea of the stages, it’s all about giving it the time, he says.

“Hurry is the enemy of love, because we start to not connect and our kids feel unimportant. That feeling is very common. We need to recognise parenthood is another full time activity.

“Not just to manage our children, but to actually talk them through their life’s struggles, and actively teach and encourage them. If your daughter is close to you, she will know how to be close to others.”

Girls need to be nourished physically, spiritually and emotionally, to help build resilience and be able to navigate their way through a tough world.

Biddulph says: “A girl who knows her own soul may be a gentle girl but with an iron in her that is not easily manipulated by careless boys or false friends. She will be loyal, tough, and protective of those around her. And of herself.”

Regulatory bodies have failed to help parents raise happy kids. “We need to stop marketing aimed at kids. We need to control the alcohol, junk food, fashion, and porn industries so that they don’t target children. It’s unethical,” he says.

“It’s time to stop the trashing of girlhood, equip parents to deal with the modern world and get the media off the backs of our daughters.”

Despite the extent of the problem, Biddulph remains a man of hope. He is encouraged by the growing worldwide movement to free our girls.

“There’s a great movement rising up all over the world to improve things for girls. People everywhere are waking up to the exploitation of our girls and taking action to address it.”

‘Surrounded by a culture in which girls are all body and only body’

Glee star Lea Michele features on the March cover of Cosmopolitan. We’re seeing more of this sexification of popular schoolgirl characters. Of course it’s not just sexing up female actresses from the high school TV show genre – this is just another example of the sexual scripts young women celebrities are expected to follow. You’re famous? Show us your flesh.

I’ve written before about the creepy photo shoot by Terry Richardson for November’s GQ, featuring Glee’s lead characters in poses suggesting schoolgirls are seductive temptresses and promoting the schoolgirl porn fantasy/barely-legal genre.

The objectification of women confronts us everywhere. It’s not about being personally ‘offended’ at seeing Lea Michele pulling back her clothing to reveal a significant amount of breast. It’s not that this cover is worse than others. It’s the cumulative impact of so many like it. It’s what it says and represents and the message it sends about women’s worth and value – on the front of a magazine read by thousands of young women. This is where your power lies: in your ability to attract sexual attention. Natasha Walter in Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, expresses it well:

Through the glamour-modelling culture, through the mainstreaming of pornography and the new acceptability of the sex industry, through the modishness of lap and pole-dancing, through the sexualisation of young girls, many young women are being surrounded by a culture in which they are all body and only body. In the hypersexual culture the woman who has won is the woman who foregrounds her physical perfection and silences any discomfort she may feel.

MTR on The Morning Show: why is it all up to parents?

I commented on the Cosmo cover and broader implications for women and girls on Channel 7’s Morning Show today with parenting expert Yvette Vignando who has also written on the issue here.

Here’s an email I received after the show. It takes up a point I got a bit passionate about as Kylie and David were trying to wrap up the show – why is it parents who are expected to clean up the mess created by a pornified culture? The onus is always on parents, rather than cultural change.

Thank you once again Melinda for speaking on The Morning Show (unfortunately for us all, you seem to be invited to that programme along with Dr Carr-Gregg time and time again yet nothing seems to change). I agree with everything you speak about in regards to the skank culture that my generation are forced to raise our children in…I can safely say that on many an occasion I feel so frustrated and angry that I have been known to say…‘Oh I give up… why don’t you marketers and money makers just take my kids from me and raise them yourself!’ As you said today, it’s ludicrous to expect parents to fight the over sexualized society we live in, at every turn, get blamed for the damaged children produced from it and witness NO ACCOUNTABILITY from the media and culture perpetuating the damage. I have three daughters of teenage years and very often I wish I didn’t…I fear for them and the damaged boys/men they may well encounter in the near future…Maybe the tides will turn and my future grandchildren will have a better start in their cultural life than this current young generation have been forced to endure.

Kind regards

Suzanne Jones

The Morning Show had another show earlier in the week about growing parental concern about sexualisation of children. Yes, I know, I’ve said the same things many times. Until things change, expect me to keep going on about it.

See also: ‘Equality hampered by sexualisation of young girls’, originally posted at The Vibe. Marcus Cleaver argues: “Despite legislation and the feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s, we still live in a society where girls are conditioned from a young age to see themselves as sexualised objects”. It’s worth reading the full article.

‘The foremost authority in Australia cyber safety lays it on the line and challenges parents to find their digital spine.’ – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

Whether it is problems with friends, worrying about how you look or just feeling a bit down in the dumps – these books are written especially for you – to help you in your journey. Purchase all four together and save $18.50 on postage! Author: Sharon Witt

In this DVD, Melinda takes us on a visual tour of popular culture. “Melinda’s presentation leaves audiences reeling. She delivers her message with a clarity and commonsense without peer.” – Steve Biddulph, author, Raising Boys, Raising Girls

In this easy-to-read updated book, Steve Biddulph shares powerful stories and give practical advice about every aspect of boyhood.

Men of Honour -written by Glen Gerreyn- encourages and inspires young men to take up the challenge to be honourable. Whether at school, in sport, at work or in relationships, we must develp our character to achieve success and experience the thrills life has on offer.

Purchase the Ruby Who? DVD and book together for only $35 saving 10% off the individual price.

“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist

Do you read women’s lifestyle magazines? Have you thought about how magazines might affect you when you read them? Faking It reflects the body of academic research on magazines, mass media, and the sexual objectification of women.

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social aversion to less than perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies. It also features women with disabilities who were discouraged from becoming pregnant at all.